Harry Allen (executioner)

Harold Bernard Allen (5 November 1911 – 14 August 1992) was one of Britain's last official executioners, officiating between 1941 and 1964. He was chief executioner at 41 executions and acted as assistant executioner at 53 others, at various prisons in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Cyprus. He acted as assistant executioner for 14 years, mostly to Albert Pierrepoint from 1941 to 1955.

In October 1955 Allen was appointed as Chief Executioner alongside Pierrepoint, although he did not execute anyone in this role until 10 May 1956, when he hanged two EOKA members in Cyprus. Pierrepoint was no longer available because he had resigned in February 1956. Allen's most controversial hanging came in April 1962, when James Hanratty was hanged for murder, despite efforts to clear his name. Hanratty was proven guilty in 2002 by DNA. Allen also assisted in the 1953 execution of Derek Bentley, who was posthumously pardoned. He performed one of the last two executions in Britain, in August 1964.

Born in Denaby Main, near Conisbrough in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 5 November 1911, Allen was brought up in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, and was educated at St Anne's Roman Catholic School in Burlington Street, Ashton. His first job was in the Transport Department at Park Bridge Iron Works, before he became a bus driver with Ashton Corporation, a job he continued to hold after he became an assistant hangman in 1941.

Allen applied for a job in the Prison Service in the 1930s but was turned down. He successfully applied to be put on the Home Office list of executioners and was often employed as an assistant executioner to Tom Pierrepoint, the uncle of Albert Pierrepoint. As a preliminary step, he witnessed his first execution at the age of 29 – that of William Cooper – on 26 November 1940 at Bedford Prison, describing it as a "very good, clean job, not as gruesome as I expected".

Allen became a publican in Farnworth, Lancashire in the 1940s, combining his role as executioner with running the pub, which he ran until the early 1950s when he took over another pub, the Junction Inn, on Higher Lane in Whitefield.

In 1945, five German prisoners of war were hanged for murdering a fellow German soldier, Sergeant-Major Wolfgang Rosterg, whom they suspected of having betrayed their escape plan. It seems to have been this crime and ultimate execution that made the deepest impression on Allen. He wrote, "It was a foul murder. They staged a mock trial, kicking the victim to death and dragging him by the neck to the toilet where they hung his lifeless body on a waste pipe. These five prisoners are the most callous men I have ever met so far but I blame the Nazi doctrine for that. It must be a terrible creed."^{[citation needed]} A 21-year-old, Erich Palme-König, was the first of the soldiers to be hanged at Pentonville Prison, swearing allegiance to the last to Nazi Germany.^{[citation needed]}

On 28 January 1953, Allen assisted at the controversial execution of Derek Bentley, who was hanged for a murder committed by a friend and accomplice during an attempted robbery, and for which Bentley received a posthumous pardon 45 years later. Contrary to some accounts, Allen was not present at the execution of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, in 1955: the assistant to Albert Pierrepoint on that occasion was Royston Rickard.^{[citation needed]}

Following the resignation of Albert Pierrepoint and the death of Stephen Wade in 1956, Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart jointly became Chief Executioners. However, the Homicide Act 1957 reduced the number of condemned criminals by 75%, from an average of 15 a year in the early 1950s to about four a year in the late 1950s. As Chief Executioner, on 11 July 1958 Allen hanged American-born Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel at Barlinnie prison, Glasgow. He also hanged Guenther Podola on 5 November 1959, a German-born petty thief, and the last man to be hanged in the UK for killing a police officer.